The Smithsonian Institute archives what seem to be a tiny fraction of the exhibitions they hold. One of the older shows lucky enough to get a webpage is Doodles, Drafts and Designs: Industrial Drawings from the Smithsonian, which looks at how designers, inventors and engineers use drawings to a) work things out, b) convince others that the ideas have merit, c) communicate precise technical data to whomever will be actually manufacturing the object and d) document the entire process.
Spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, the exhibit covers a pretty random selection of products: Woodworking machines of the 1860s, gas station meters from the 1930s, fighter pilot interfaces of the 1940s, and that rare object that was designed way back when but is still in use today, like the Brannock device that you'll know from modern-day shoe stores. There's also weird inventions that never saw the light of day, like an electromechanical pest eliminator that drowns flies in kerosene.
